Language

When you first try to listen to Turkish or even speaking it, one of the things you might notice very early is the many “ü”s in the language. “Görüşürüz”, “Güle güle” and “iyi günler“ might be one of the first words you encounter in Turkey. Very striking as well while reading are the set of different letters you see: ç, ş, ı, ğ. Apart from the “ğ”, the „soft g“ it doesn’t take you long to manage a somewhat ok pronunciation (the ç resembles mostly the “ch“ in -chain-, the “ı” is the sound you give the “e“ in -stumble- and “ş” is simply “sh“ as in -shoe-).

A good thing about Turkish is, you can easily read it as it is written, once you memorized a somewhat proper pronunciation.

The immediately following bad thing however is that – as in every other language – the Turks swallow many letters and tend to speak rather fast and, as the southern Europe mentality goes, interrupt many times, so that by the time you got used to one person speaking, another one takes over. This requires some time to get used to – both being interrupted, as well as listening to the “common“ language.

In general, though the Turkish language is very structured. Quite similar to the examples Finnish or even Latin, Turkish has a strict order in the sentences with the Verb being in the end, the Subject in the beginning and the When – Where – What (Object) in between.

Most things like in, at, on, with, to, from, etc. are dealt with by suffixes. That’s why with the help of the suffixes Turkish language becomes really flexible.

Let’s take for example the sentence “ben Ankara’dayım”. Ben is the subject in the beginning: “I”. Ankara, the city, as a “where” after the subject and with the suffix “-da” to indicate „in, at, on“. That gives us “I in Ankara”. In the Turkish language you usually don’t use any verb in relation to “to be”, as in “I am here” or “he is a nice person”, with only a few exceptions as the future tense. Bearing that in mind we have “I am in Ankara”.

Knowing the grammars at least will help a great deal in being able to read the language, from where it’s only a small step further to speak the language.

Turkish is a part of the Turkic-languages.

These are mainly spoken in Turkey, some parts in central Asia and a large area in Northern Russia.

Turkish itself can easily be seen as a linking language between Arabian languages and European languages. First one, because of it’s large influence from Persian and Arabic languages, second one for many influences from France and England. “Tren”, “innovasyon”, “Pedagoji”, “Kafe”, “Ekstra” and “Televizyon” are just a few examples for those, whereas the Arabian words as “Kalem” or “Merhaba” are the cause of many exceptions in the language („Aaah, it’s not rule. It’s exception. It’s Arabic“).

There are many local dialects and accents throughout the country – e.g. the people in Ankara don’t like the “eastern accent”, as for example the „west Germans“ wouldn’t like the Bavarian or Eastern accent, or the English despise Scottish.

Also there is a larger amount of people speaking Kurdish and some other dialects in Turkey, but since most people throughout the country watch TV – for example the national Turkish channel TRT, which is owned by the state – the differences are decreasing continuously.

Having Mediterranean habit, you may realize that the distance between people is quite low while the volume is a bit high.

Don’t get surprised when you see Turkish people having physical touch while speaking. The body language, jest and mimics are quite important for people to express themselves.